Bengaluru: In the just concluded Karnataka assembly elections, which saw the Congress secure a decisive 135 of 224 seats, four candidates stood out with their performance — two for being sole winners from their much smaller parties, and two for being the only Independents to win this year.
Apart from the three major players, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular), or JD(S), the Kalyana Rajya Pragati Paksha (KRPP), and the Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha (SKP) saw one each of their candidates win — Gali Janardhana Reddy and Darshan Puttannaiah, respectively.
Reddy — part of the Reddy brother trio known for their alleged involvement in the Bellari mining industry — launched the KRPP in December last year after a fallout with the BJP. The former minister defeated Congress candidate Iqbal Ansari in Gangavathi. The KRPP had fielded 37 candidates and Reddy was the only victor. His wife, Aruna Lakshmi, lost from Bellari city.
SKP’s Darshan Puttannaiah defeated JD(S) candidate and former Mandya MP C.S. Puttaraju in Melukote. The 45-year old techie-turned-politician and son of the prominent farmer leader the late K.S. Puttanaiah, Darshan had unsuccessfully contested the 2018 assembly polls also from the same seat.
Among the successful Independents is former Congress member K.H. Puttaswamy Gowda, who won with a huge margin of 37,286 votes from the Gauribidanur seat, defeating his nearest rival, Congress’s N.H. Shivashankara Reddy.
The other successful Independent candidate is also a former Congress leader. Former KPCC district general secretary, Latha Mallikarjun, won from the Harapanahalli constituency by 13,845 votes, defeating BJP’s G. Karunakara Reddy.
She is the daughter of former deputy chief minister M.P. Prakash and sister of former Harapanahalli MLA M.P. Ravindra. Prakash was the deputy CM during the Congress-JD(S) coalition government in 2005-06.
Among Latha’s sisters, M.P. Veena joined the Congress while M.P. Suma joined the BJP earlier this month.
Latha and Veena were both aspirants for a Congress ticket from Harapanahalli but decided to leave the party when that didn’t work out, according to media reports.
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KRPP and SKP
As mentioned earlier, G. Janardhana Reddy comes from the influential Reddy family. During the 2004-2006 mining boom, the Reddy brothers allegedly amassed significant wealth by exporting iron ore. However, in 2011, their mining operations came under investigation by the Karnataka Lokayukta and later by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for alleged illegal mining and export of iron ore.
Reddy was first sidelined in the BJP but was brought to the fore again by senior leader and Home Minister Amit Shah at the behest of Yediyurappa. He was arrested in 2015 over illegal mining charges and later in 2018 for his alleged links to a Rs 600-crore ponzi scheme, said media reports.
Meanwhile, the SKP is a political party linked to the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha farmers’ association. It was founded by Dalit writer Devanur Mahadeva in 2005 and merged with Yogendra Yadav’s Swaraj India in 2017, but it fought under its own name this time.
It contested from several constituencies including Mandya, Melukote, Virajpet, Chitradurga, and Belthangady in alliance with the Congress. Most of these areas have a majority of farmers from the Vokkaliga community.